Yarmouth hopes to restart transit

YARMOUTH — Yarmouth is without a municipal transit service this summer for the first time in 18 years and town council does not want to let the year end without securing a replacement.

An online survey of residents wrapped up Sunday with pleasing results, said Yarmouth Mayor Pam Mood. Well over 200 people spent time answering a battery of questions that will ultimately help council as it searches for solutions to the transit issue, said Mood.

Responses to the online portion of the survey did not include people who still have time to hand in a paper survey.

“We wanted to make sure seniors homes (and) public housing … had access (to the survey). They’ll have a couple extra days to get those in,” Mood said Monday.

The town wants to develop a service agreement with a municipal transit services provider by the end of the year.

“The idea of this entire study and process is to find out not just what we need, but in what detail,” it is needed, said Mood.

The previous transit system ended April 30 after 18 years of service.

Hut’s Transit owner-operator Gary Hudson told The Chronicle Herald that ridership was down but expenses were up.

“When I first started … I was only paying about 57 cents a litre for fuel,” Hudson said last month.

He operated two 15-passenger vans and employed a part-time driver, along with two casual drivers.

Hudson said he carried about 17,000 passengers a year when he began the service, but ridership had dwindled to about 9,200.

He said the town’s annual subsidy of $60,000 was not enough to keep up with costs.

“What we’ve had was great, but it was 18 years of the same thing and the dynamics of the entire town have changed,” Mood said.

“We need to make sure that when people are leaving work they have access to transit.”

The previous transit service operated an hourly route weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

And a new schedule must include the Nova Scotia Community College campus, she said.

“Everything from where are the (bus) stops, and how many people are using them, what are the times, all those things” will be put together in a package for council’s consideration, said Mood.

“The most important thing is to ensure that the people who need the service are able to tap into it,” she said.

The town has subsidized public transit in recent years to the tune of about $60,000 annually. That funding level will be scrutinized.

“We don’t know if it will be less. We don’t know if it will be more. We don’t know what it will look like,” said Mood.